Personal musical history

The very first songs I can recall hearing are the following, when I must have been five years old: 1) Let 'Em In - Paul McCartney 2) Benny and the Jets - Elton John 3) Saturday in the Park - Chicago 4) Everyday People - Sly & the Family Stone When I was six I heard Chucky Berry's music at my Uncle Leroy's house in New York and it pleased me. When I was seven I can recall hearing Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", which was released in 1980. I was in my father's truck listening on the AM radio. Also the Beatles' "Rocky Raccoon" which delighted me and I yearned to find out more about. At eight years old my sister played David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for me which made me tear up with emotion. The 8-track was called CHANGESONEBOWIE. When I was nine I got the Police's "Ghost in the Machine" on 8-track and listened to it thru my QXL robot. I heard it had something to do with a man named 'Jung' and I swore to myself that someday I would study Jung, much as William S. Burroughs said to himself that he would smoke opium after reading Thomas de Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" in high school. (I did not read that book until Junior year at Bard College in 1994.) When I was ten I got a tape player and I got Rush's "Signals" when it came out. I also got Asia's first self-titled album on tape. Curiously enough, I got those last two albums on CD earlier this year. I bought cassette tapes up until age 15, some important ones were Steve Martin's "Comedy is Not Pretty", "Fragile/Close to the Edge" (combined together on one tape!), the Grateful Dead's "Skull & Roses" tape. When I was 15 my mother took me to Crazy Eddie in Nanuet NY and we purchased a stereo with a turntable. Soon after that my sister's boyfriend, Frank DeCarlo, the man I wish she had married, bought me Rubber Soul and Revolver, plus the White Album and Wings Wild Life. Why he chose that last one I still do not understand ? One of the first two records I ever purchased when I got a turntable from Crazy Eddy at 15 years of age were Kansas' Leftoverture and Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick. Progressive rock was my first love !